A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  I clambered on the desk and peeked out the tiny open window. Too small to climb through, so I rested my chin on the hard sill. Judging by the light, it was afternoon. People strolled on the sidewalk below. Free. Had Frau Röhm trapped me? Or was she in custody too? After all, she was a known associate of Ernst Röhm. Perhaps as much of a loose end as I.

  I pulled out two forms meant for confessions. On the first I wrote Anton Vogel June 10, 1925–July 6, 1934. I folded it into a paper airplane, always straight on the creases, as Anton and Señor Santana had admonished. I spared a glance at the door. The SS would have me killed for being a known associate of Röhm, as they had so many others. I did not have much time.

  I climbed back on the desk and threw the airplane out the window. It wheeled down like a hawk, into the street of innocent passersby. A young boy reached up and caught it before it landed. He walked away with it in his hand. A child should not be holding information on a murder, but if they murdered children, then children needed to know.

  I climbed down and looked at the other form. The door opened as I finished the final crease on my second airplane. Written inside the airplane was my name, and today’s date.

  “Good day, Fräulein.” I recognized Lang’s voice, but did not turn to face him.

  I cradled the paper airplane in my lap. A wing bent wrong. I straightened it. It should fly like an arrow.

  He came around the desk and sat across from me. A broad expanse of gleaming mahogany separated us.

  “Why do you think you are here?” he asked, giving me the rope to hang myself.

  He did not know that I no longer cared. I redid creases on the airplane.

  “Fräulein. I must insist that you answer me.”

  With an enormous effort I raised my head. An expression flickered across his eyes so quickly that I could not place it. Surprise? Hurt? Sympathy? Anger? Anton’s expressions too had been mercurial.

  He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. I stroked a fingertip down the wing, having lost interest in him.

  He came around his desk and pressed a warm glass into my free hand. I stared at it, unsure what to do.

  “Drink it,” he said, voice soft.

  Clear liquid burned its way down the back of my throat. Vodka. I downed the rest in a gulp. Part of me knew that drinking during an SS interrogation was foolish. But I had nothing more to lose. “More?”

  He pried the glass from my hand. “No.”

  His action shocked me enough that I looked at him again. He walked behind the desk, back stiff. He returned the glass to its drawer and locked it. Then he sat again and steepled his fingers. “Why do you think you are here?”

  I shrugged.

  “It will be worse for you if you refuse to answer my questions.”

  I laughed. “Worse for me?”

  He cocked his head.

  I stroked the airplane.

  “I would have to pass you along. To men not as circumspect in their methods.”

  I stared at my fingers. Dirt lodged under my nails. Where had I picked that up? It did not matter. None of it mattered.

  “Will you cause trouble for the party?”

  “Me? Cause them trouble?” My bitter words shot across the room.

  “The party has caused you trouble?”

  “For years.”

  A sharp rap sounded on the door. He opened it. Angry voices squabbled behind me.

  I sailed the airplane around the room. It crashed into the window. I retrieved it.

  “Why are you out of your chair?” He turned toward me, disbelief in his voice.

  “I had to get the airplane.”

  “Sit down.”

  I walked back and dropped into the chair. He closed the door and came back.

  “In a few minutes others will come for you,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You must cooperate.”

  I checked the airplane’s nose. It had a dent from the wall. It was meant to be flown outdoors.

  He slipped the airplane out of my hand and set it on his desk. “You are being held for the murder of Manfred Brandt. If you killed him, there is worry that you are part of a wider SA conspiracy. Brandt was in league with members of the SS, reporting on Röhm’s movements.”

  “Oh.”

  “They know nothing of your activities as a reporter at Lichterfelde. Do not tell them. And do not admit to being part of an SA conspiracy.”

  I reached for the airplane again. He grabbed my hand, his fingers cold.

  “Hannah?” He cupped my chin and tilted it up so that he saw my face, and I his. His eyes wandered from mine, probably swollen from crying, to my mouth.

  I had no strength to pull my chin away.

  “What did she say to you?” He sounded worried, not something an SS officer should be.

  I closed my eyes, and we sat so for who knows how long, my chin in his palm, neither of us moving. Finally he cleared his throat. “What did she say to you?” he repeated in a whisper.

  I opened my eyes and stared into his. “That you killed Anton. She saw . . .” I could not finish the sentence.

  “Verdammt,” he swore.

  I flinched.

  “I apologize for the language,” he said, and I envisioned the mother in the photograph in his apartment nodding approvingly. “But Anton is not dead.”

  I pulled my chin out of his hand, wanting to believe him. “Then where is he?”

  “With his grandmother.” I sagged in the chair. He put his hands up as if to catch me. I gripped both arms of the chair to keep upright.

  “But—” My mind whirled. I had known that Frau Röhm was scheming and had suspected that she killed Mouse since I talked to her maid this morning, but this went beyond that. “She—”

  “We have little time. Your name is Adelheid Zinsli. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. That was the name on my Swiss passport. Frau Inge must have found it in my suitcase and given it to him. She had inadvertently helped me. I could get through this. Somehow I would make it through the interrogation and reclaim Anton. I struggled to listen, to understand.

  “No one knows of a link between Adelheid and the Röhms.” His voice was clipped.

  “No one?” I raised my eyebrow. He knew.

  He rushed on. “Deny everything. Tell them you were not near the mill. You do not know the Röhms. You are not Hannah Vogel. Frau Röhm is a woman driven mad by grief and has mistaken you for someone else. Above all, do not mention the boy. He is not in any paperwork. He won’t be if you say nothing about him.”

  “When I was arrested, I had a German passport in the name of Hannah Vogel.” I fought to think, tried to reason. Anton was alive. I had to get free to find him.

  “I substituted that passport for the Zinsli one.” He patted my knee. “And the Hannah Vogel files are unavailable.”

  “In your wardrobe,” I said, without thinking.

  He swore again, and I suppressed a smile when he apologized. “This complicates matters.”

  “For whom?”

  A sharp rap sounded on the door. He leapt to attention.

  “I will keep your secrets as best as I can,” I said, my voice cold. “But if I find that you killed Anton, I will deliver you over to them.”

  And we both knew that I would. I would do things I had never thought possible. I hated to learn it, but there it was.

  “I would expect nothing less from you,” he said with a crooked smile. Another knock. “Good luck, Adelheid.”

  He picked the airplane off his desk and stuck it in his pocket before striding to the door.

  I stayed in the chair, not trusting my knees to support me. Was Anton really alive? Or was this a trick? If I did not mention Anton and he never went into any paperwork, it would be as if he did not exist. Perfect for the Nazis if they had killed him. Could I trust Lang? Why would he risk his life to help me?

  He threw the bolt and opened the door to the interrogation room.

  “She knows nothing,” he said. I wondered how he could trust m
e to play along with his plan. What would happen to him if I turned him in? “She was never there. Your informant is wrong.”

  A giant crowded in. He looked out of place in the tiny room, like a horse in a kitchen.

  “I’ll need to verify that, Hauptsturmführer Lang.” His guttural voice brooked no argument.

  Behind him Lang’s cheek twitched. Adelheid would not like verification.

  “Frau Zinsli is a Swiss citizen,” he said. “Certain protocols must be followed.”

  “The Swiss don’t run Germany. The Führer does.” The man glared at me. A bully. I straightened in my chair.

  While they argued, I concocted Adelheid’s story. I stuck to the truth as much as possible. Adelheid had to be a reporter for a Swiss paper, writing under the same pseudonym that I did. Let them check my articles. My Swiss editor did not know my real name. I decided to say that I had traveled to Berlin to do a piece on celebrated National Socialist monuments. That might give them pause.

  I had broken down in church because the old woman, whose name I did not know, had accused me of murder and told me that the Gestapo would put me away forever. One heard such dreadful things were happening in Germany these last few days. I mentally practiced my Swiss accent, wondering if it would hold up under torture. It had to.

  I had to be released to free Anton from that woman. Whether he knew it or not, Lang’s alibi for me had a grain of truth: she had been driven mad by grief. She was evil, and I had to get Anton.

  The next hours went better than I had any right to expect. Lang intervened when he could. The idea that I was writing an article about National Socialist monuments and my standing as a Swiss citizen carried weight. Even the Gestapo did not want to anger the Swiss, and my story was more plausible than Frau Röhm’s contention that I had followed a German thug to an abandoned mill and murdered him, an odd thing for a Swiss travel reporter to do.

  The questioning took hours. Although dizzy and terrified, I sat upright in my chair, ankles crossed like a proper Swiss lady. My stocky interrogator never erupted into violence, although the threat hovered always.

  Eventually he left me alone, clearly disappointed that he found no reason to hurt me. I longed to curl up under the massive desk and sleep. When Lang came through the silent door and touched my shoulder, I jumped.

  “I apologize for your difficult day, Frau Zinsli,” he said in a clipped voice. “We have cleared up the misunderstanding. You are free to go.” He tucked my hand in the crook of his elbow and held it, so that I would know I was not free to go.

  I gripped the top of the desk with my free hand while the room pitched around me.

  “Can you stand?”

  “I can.” Hopefully.

  “I will walk you to the door.”

  With Lang at my side, I walked down the long halls to the front door. Three years ago I had walked next to him through the Hall of the Unnamed Dead like this. I had not trusted him then, either.

  28

  We stepped into the dregs of twilight. Two soldiers posted by the front door gave Lang a crisp “Heil Hitler!” and I remembered that he was a Hauptsturmführer, an officer. He could not have attained that position without staining his hands with blood.

  The day’s heat radiated off the stone sidewalk. Lang stayed in step by my side. “Do you know where you are going next?”

  I shook my head. I could not go back to Boris’s hotel, not with the SS tailing me. If I headed to his house, Frau Inge might be there, and the SS would be arriving to arrest Boris soon in any case. I could not involve either. I would find a hotel, one suitable for a Swiss reporter. Then I would find a way to call Boris.

  “I wish to talk to you a bit more, perhaps over a late dinner?” His voice told me that it was a command, not a request.

  I stiffened, longing to refuse. I did not want to be alone with him. “Why?”

  “We are being watched.” He smiled, as if we were choosing a restaurant. “They will continue to watch. I wish to make you a proposal, then drop you at the train station, where you can take a train to Switzerland.”

  “I will not leave Germany without Anton.”

  He sighed and gave me an exasperated look that reminded me of Boris. I forced myself not to recoil at the familiarity. “Let us eat, and find a place for you to spend the night.”

  I thought about arguing, but decided that I was safest from my watchdogs in the company of a more powerful watchdog. “Dinner sounds delightful.”

  He patted my hand and escorted me down Prinz Albrecht Strasse, past the lighted windows of Gestapo offices where industrious interrogators still worked.

  He must want to know how I knew about the files in his wardrobe, but I sensed that there was more. He had not known that I knew his secrets when he switched my passports. He had a use for me, and I shuddered to think what it might be.

  He broke the silence. “I know a restaurant near here. Good German food.”

  “That would be acceptable.” It felt like a date, and I stiffened. But a date suited me better than an official appointment back at Prinz Albrecht Strasse, so I held my peace.

  We strolled down the street in the warm evening air. I waited for him to talk, assuming that he would know when it was safe to do so.

  “I apologize for what you went through today.”

  “Was it your fault?” I looked over at him as we walked, but the streetlights illuminated an expressionless face under the brim of his SS hat.

  “I would not put you through that.” He lowered his voice. “Hannah.”

  I disliked the tenderness with which he said my name. “Then why?”

  “Once the accusation was made,” he continued in a normal tone, “you had to be arrested. I delayed as long as I could, but that was only a few days. I hoped that she would change her mind or you would leave Berlin, but you and Frau Röhm were both persistent. When there was nothing else to be done, I arranged to be in charge of the arrest to help you.”

  “Like switching my passport with the one that Frau Inge procured for you.”

  “Hannah Vogel would never have made it out of Prinz Albrecht Strasse alive, you must realize that.”

  My jaw clenched. I did know that, but I did not wish to hear it. “Why are you taking Frau Zinsli to dinner?”

  He glanced casually over his shoulder. “As an apology from the SS. I do not wish her to print anything compromising about her visit here.” Then, more softly. “And I hope that we may become . . . more closely acquainted.”

  I gave him a guarded look.

  “I know that Fräulein Vogel is involved with the banker. I have always been aware of his trips to London to visit you,” he said in a bitter tone. “Have no worries on that score.”

  We strolled on in silence. He knew where I had been all along and could have turned me over to Röhm at any time during the last three years. But he had not done so. I owed him more and more, and the bill was soon to come due.

  A man walking a dachshund started to cross the street when he saw Lang’s uniform, but checked himself. Lang bent and scratched the dog behind its floppy ears. The owner looked worried.

  “Beautiful animal,” Lang said.

  “Th-thank you, Hauptsturmführer,” the owner stuttered.

  “We will be late.” I plucked at Lang’s sleeve. The man was obviously frightened and wanted us to leave him in peace.

  He rose. “Certainly, Frau Zinsli.”

  We entered a beer garden with round tables arrayed around a massive oak tree and colored lights strung by the dance floor. The band in the corner played a polka. I had not heard one in a long time. I could not suppress a quick laugh at such a cliché.

  He turned to me. “Is it acceptable to you?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  He pulled out my chair, and I sank into it. Exhausted and ravenous, I scanned the menu. It felt as if we were in Bavaria, not Berlin. I ordered a schnitzel, spätzle noodles, and red cabbage from a chubby waitress wearing a dirndl. I thought of ordering a beer, but ins
tead had mineral water. I needed a clear head for the meeting.

  “Frau Zinsli, we must look like two people who barely know each other.”

  “That should not be too difficult, as it is the truth.”

  He smiled. “Quite.”

  “This would be the part where we would be asking each other about our history, but I imagine we can skip that, since I know that you work for the SS and you know every single thing that could be stuffed into a file. You have more experience than I at having dinner with people under interrogation. What does one talk about?”

  “I like your Swiss accent. Have you practiced long?”

  “All day.”

  He smiled. It reminded me of his smile in the photograph back at his apartment, the one with his parents and the dog. A real smile.

  “What brings you to Germany? Besides your article, that is.”

  “I hoped that the interrogation part of the day was over.” I nodded to the plump waitress as she set my mineral water and an earthen bowl of pretzels in front of me. I bit into a pretzel.

  “I suspect that you smuggled information about the Night of the Long Knives to England,” he said in an undertone, as casually if we spoke about the weather. He sipped his beer.

  I forced the pretzel down my suddenly dry throat with a sip of water. “You are not much for small talk, are you?”

  “If I can’t ask questions, then I must make statements.” We ate pretzels in silence, listening to the band and watching each other. How much could I trust him? Although it might have been a trick, he seemed to have saved my life. And if he had, I had to assume that he had reason to do so. I probably would not like confirmation of that reason.

  An unassuming man in a workman’s cap sat at a nearby table and unfolded the Völkische Beobachter. From the way Lang avoided looking at him, I suspected that he was the man tailing us. Or one of many men tailing us. It would not do to underestimate them.

  “Shall we dance?” Lang stood and proffered his arm.

  I stared in disbelief, then caught myself and took his arm. “I have not danced the polka for a long time.”